Other Windsor Schools

Alma Road

In 1845 the Revd Steven Hawtrey founded St Marks School for Boys, it was located in premises at the corner of Goswell Road and Oxford Road (formerly Clewer Lane)

In a postscript to an account of St. Mark’ s School, published in 1859, Rev. Steven Hawtrey tells of what those early days and ministrations led on to:

“About twenty years ago,” he writes, ” the Bishop of New Zealand (George Augustus Selwyn) was curate of Windsor. One of the plans he devised and carried out for the benefit of the parish, was to erect a schoolroom to be used as a chapel on Sundays, in the outlying hamlet of Dedworth, then attached to the vicarage of Windsor, though separated from it by the parish of Clewer, and three miles distant from the Windsor Parish church. When the chapel was built the maintenance of the service was entrusted to me.”

“It will be within recollection of many how very badly the singing in the church was performed, feeling that this was altogether wrong, one of the first things I did, was to look out for some efficient way of teaching the children to sing with propriety. While considering what was to be done, I fell in with a copy of Hullah’s Manual at Parker’s shop in London. I was fortunate in having with me, as clerk at Dedworth, Mr. G. Bambridge, a thorough musician. Having mastered the book, we obtained leave to teach music from notes, after the regular school hours, to those of the Windsor National School boys who showed a disposition to learn. The best of them were now formed into a little choir, and accompanied me each Sunday to Dedworth.”

“This was the first nucleus of St. Mark’s School. For some years we continued to go Sunday after Sunday to Dedworth. There was an afternoon and evening service, and the distance was too great to return to Windsor between the services, we had tea together every Sunday; in the summer, under the shade of the trees in the orchard adjoining the chapel, the Sunday story book read . It was working into the boys’ hearts a humanized, affectionate, family feeling, which has never gone out of the school”.

“In process of time the full design of the Bishop of New Zealand was carried out……… The hamlet of Dedworth was united to the Parish of Clewer, and that portion of the Parish of Clewer which lay within the Borough of Windsor, was formed into a distinct Chapelry, and a Church (Trinity Church) built in it, of which I was incumbent for the first seven years. On its consecration, the choir was transferred to the Church thus built.”

“Some difficulty at this time supervened about the continuance of the music lessons which had hitherto been given at the National School, and it became necessary, if the character of our singing was to be perpetuated, that we should have a separate school, in which singing should form part of the school business. The idea that they might possibly have a school of their own was discussed with very lively emotion at one of our Sunday teas and the question arose, where could the school be held? One of the boys remembered that there was a washerwoman’s cottage, with a small drying-ground attached, at the junction of Clewer and Goswell Lane, which had been for some time vacant. The next morning he came with tremulous eagerness to say that the board was still up giving notice that the cottage was to be let. We took it, and thus began with nineteen boys.

“They entered on their domain, and set to work themselves to prepare the place – uprooting the straggling cabbages and gooseberry bushes, levelling the ground, spreading and rolling the gravel that was carted in.”

“The bathroom was fabricated out of a little duck pond, the adjoining dressing-room out of the pig-stye. Another shed was converted into their carpenter’s shop and tool-house. A little locker was put up for every boy; each one had also his separate hat, cloak, and towel peg.”

“The cottage consisted of four rooms; a kitchen and small bedroom, and two fairly sized rooms all on the ground floor. A labouring man, lately disabled from work by an accident, and his wife, were given house room in the kitchen and small bedroom. Their duty was to boil the kettle and perform the domestic duties which the social character of the school called for. The two other rooms were for the purpose of the school.”

“When all was ready, we received our first schoolmaster from St. Mark’s Training College, Chelsea. (Mr Charles Morgan, afterwards Archdeacon Morgan). His abilities were excellent, but it was not his ability, but his truthfulness of character that I look back to as being of unspeakable benefit to us. He left us in time for a more important position, but before he left, he had stamped upon the school the character of truth which, by the blessing of God, it has never lost.”

“The master and his boys first met at Church. The hour of Morning Service was seven o’clock. After Church they walked together to the school to breakfast. The master’s breakfast was laid on a table in the middle of the room, and the boys took their seats at the tables ranged round the room facing him. Each boy took out his little bag a slice of bread and butter which he had brought from home, and a basin of milk and water or coco was provided for each. Thus they began their first day, and each successive day was like it. After the school had been in operation for about two years, a curate (Mr King) came to assist me for a few months. The school interested him greatly. He often joined the social meals, and found the intercourse with the boys to be (in his own words) ‘a source of much personal enjoyment to himself.’ He also saw a good deal of their parents, and learnt the feelings they entertained for the school; he learned, too, how many other families wished to sent their children there. Accordingly he proposed to me to raise the number from 20 to 50. I hesitated for a time, fearing the influx of so many new boys”.

“He spoke, however, so confidently of the soundness of the work, and felt so convinced it might safely be done, that I consented. The result proved that he was perfectly right. Within a month the number was raised to fifty – that is, was more than doubled – and that change has only produced good results.”

“This was ten years ago (1849). The numbers that have pressed for admission since that time have been such that the two rooms have been thrown in to one; the man and his wife have had to seek lodgings elsewhere; and kitchen, bedroom, and even the dressing room and bath-house, and a neighbouring cottage have all been gradually taken up, and are now crowded with the boy; and still the character and tone which it acquired at the first setting off is maintained”.

“The moral seems to be this: begin with a small number, get a good tone into the school, and the incomers will pick it up.”

“Its now eight years since I resigned the Incumbency (1851). On my resignation it was given to my younger brother, but the school has not been the less prosperous since then.”

“Mr Morgan remained with us long enough for the boy who took his place at the head of the Boy’s table, on the first morning the school was opened (now the Rev R Blythe, rector of Ogbourne St. George, Wilts in 1900), to go through his training at St. Mark’s College, Chelsea, and return to us as Master. Since he was nine years old, I have watched over him with something of parental care, and now he repays me by the loving spirit in which he carries on for others that system of training which formed himself.”

On 25th April 1862 (St Mark’s Day) the school relocated to a new building in Alma Road built on land obtained from the Vansittart Estate. At first for day boys only, the school was run on public school lines.

In 1862/3 St Mark’s School changed status:

“By the advice of Her Majesty’s Inspectors, he Stephen Hawtrey the Warden of the School, ceased to receive the Government Grants and raised the weekly payments of the boys, so as to make the school self-supporting, but it still continued to be, on the whole, for the same class. It was in 1862 that the system of payment by results had been introduced.

St Mark’s became a private school held in a large schoolroom on the corner of Alma Road and Claremont Road. Stephen Hawtrey had wanted to have the boys educated using his own methods and this was now possible. The school became a boarding school as well as a day school and this resulted in a change to the social class of those attending the school. The boarders were the sons of gentlemen – the sons of those who know or heard of him through his connection with Eton.

He had hoped that the day boys from the town would continue to attend, but it was not possible for the sons of Windsor’s shopkeepers and tradesmen and those of the gentlemen to mix in the same classrooms. To overcome this difficulty the Rev. Hawtrey bought a former Baptist’s Chapel in Grove Road and established St Mark’s Middle School ‘for a lower class of boy’

In 1870 boarders were accepted and boarding houses were built, Chapel, Alexander, Roberts, Connaugh and Lawrence Houses, and the Hermitage. for the first twenty years of its existence the school remained in private hands, controlled by members of the Hawtrey family. Then a Governing Body was appointed, with Hawtrey as Chairman. Rather understandably there was a pronounced clerical influence both among governors and staff. A few months before his death Hawtrey retired, to be succeeded by the Rev. A. W. Upcott. On the latter’s departure to take up another appointment, the school suffered a period of decline, until in 1894 the Rev. C. N. Nagel, took over.

Warden – Rev.R Gee D.D canon of Windsor & Chaplain in ordinary to the Queen.

Head Master Rev. C. N. Nagel M.A

Assistant Masters F. E. Robinson M.A., T.T. Graham, J. May M.A. B.Sc.Lond. J. Digwall M.A., O. H. Collins A.C.O. (music), G. Garrigon B.es.L., H. Perrin (shorthand), G. D. Hiscox (art)

Harrod & Co Directory 1876 J. T. Dobson, head master

Clewer Lane Slater’s Directory 1852

Charles Morgan, Master

Robert Blythe, Master